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Consultant to guide Pittsburgh riverfront revival
Wednesday, February 23, 2000 By Tom Barnes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Alex Krieger, an internationally known architect and urban planner from Cambridge, Mass., was asked recently why he would want to work in Pittsburgh.
"The question kind of floored me," he said here yesterday. "Pittsburgh is one of the great urban centers of America. You're known throughout the world for a pioneering relationship between a city and its rivers. You have great riverfronts -- that can be better."
Krieger, a principal in the firm of Chan Krieger & Associates, was chosen yesterday as a consultant to the Riverlife Task Force, a 40-member group appointed by Mayor Murphy last summer to develop a "vision" and framework for current and future developments along the city's three rivers.
"Among the cities we would choose to work in the United States, Pittsburgh ranks right up there," he told the group. "It's a great privilege for us to help you. This is a once in a half-century opportunity for the riverfronts that surround the city of Pittsburgh."
Krieger's firm, which is also doing waterfront design plans in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Boston, Des Moines, Iowa, and other cities, was chosen from a field of five finalists. That group was narrowed from 21 national architecture and urban planning firms that responded to a call by the Riverlife Task Force in December.
Davitt Woodwell, director of the task force, said choosing the consultant was difficult. One reason Krieger's firm was chosen was because of its experience in dealing with waterfront design and development.
"We have a top-notch guy who is well-respected," said Teresa Heinz, chairwoman of the Howard Heinz Endowment and a task force member. "He's a person of broad vision of people and places."
The Heinz Endowments have provided $250,000 so far for the task force's work and may ultimately provide between $500,000 and $1 million for the work, which is expected to last 18 months.
The exact scope of Krieger's work and his fee are yet to be determined. Woodwell said those should be known within about a month.
Woodwell said the task force is not just interested in the appropriate type of development along the riverfronts but in "life on the rivers themselves," including tending to the needs of recreational boaters and barge operators.
Although the task force was named by Murphy, its funding is expected to be all or mostly private. Ultimately, the budget for 18 months could reach $1.5 million, with other foundations helping the Heinz Endowments with the funding.
The prime area of the task force's attention are both sides of the three rivers, stretching generally from the West End Bridge over the Ohio to the Liberty Bridge over the Monongahela to the 16th Street Bridge over the Allegheny. Eventually, the study area could be even broader.
The task force will develop design and development standards for future projects in that area, as well as working with projects that are already under way, such as the construction of the two new stadiums and the soon to begin reconstruction of David L. Lawrence Convention Center.
Krieger said Pittsburgh should be concerned not only with the appearance and development of the "thin edge" along each river, but with "perpendiculars," or "fingers" of development reaching back from the river's edge.
He said projects built in those areas should "respect and reuse the past in innovative ways."
He said he was a strong believer in "making riverfronts places to dwell, not just places to work or have fun."
His office is in Cambridge, near Boston, and he showed slides of how Boston has developed new housing in buildings on piers that jut out into its waterfront.
Compared with the last 50 years, during which people fled urban cores for the suburbs, "this is a wonderful moment for American cities," Krieger said.
"People are finding interest in cities again" as a place to live, he said. "Life in the suburbs has turned out to be rather boring."
Another of his key beliefs is to afford citizens "full public access" to the riverfronts, which for decades were blocked off by huge mills and other industrial plants.
He said he wanted to "avoid homogenization" on what is developed along Pittsburgh's rivers, and come up with parks, trails, buildings and other things that are "distinct, beautiful and remarkable."
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